Sunday, January 20, 2008

It's hard to overstate the extent to which Russians are slowly being cut off, just as in Soviet times, from the outside world. True reporting is driven daily into more and more obscure corners of the Internet, and sooner or later will be extinguished even there.

Starting in January 2008, “Novaya Gazeta in St. Petersburg,” a local edition of Russia’s most prominent independent newspaper, will no longer appear in newsstands of the Leningrad Oblast. The area’s two largest newspaper distributors, Lenoblpechat and Nevoblpechat, have refused to carry the publication, according to a statement from the paper’s editors. The distributors blame the move on “a shortage of commercial interest.” However, local readers have told editors that the newspaper is being whisked off the shelves, and is always difficult to find at kiosks. Meanwhile, one of the paper’s journalists has been fined 500 rubles (€13.91 or $20.46) for his work on the “Dissenters’ Marches,” according to Fontanka.ru. The reporter was charged with disobeying orders from authorities.

Novaya Gazeta is far from the first local publication to face pressure from the district. Some experts believe that the move is the latest tactic used by the governor of the Leningrad Oblast, Valery Serdyukov, in an attempt to create an informational blockade of mass-media not loyal to the administration. Another local Novaya Gazeta edition in the city of Samara stopped publication in late 2007, under even harsher force from above. The paper’s computers were repeatedly confiscated, reporters were detained near-daily, and a criminal investigation was launched against the editor-in-chief, Sergei Kurt-Adzhiev. Partner organizations, such as the paper’s printing house, were directly visited by militsiya officers and threatened. Novaya Gazeta’s troubles coincide with a report by the Glasnost Defense Foundation, which discusses the difficulties and dangers facing journalists and the media in today’s Russia.

News.ru reports (LR staff translation, not from our professional experts, corrections welcome) on efforts to prosecute those who dare to translate and republish reports from the Western press:

In Orlov Region the newspaper Red Line has translated and republished an article from the British daily The Guardian has encountered a problem with the local prosecutor's office, reports the Russian website Favorites. A translation of the article is also found on site InoPressa.ru.

Late last year, Red Line published a translation of a December 21, 2007 Guardian article by the paper's Moscow correspondent Luke Harding entitled "Putin, the Kremlin Power Struggle, and the $40 billion fortune." Recently, the editor of Red Line, Yuri Lebedkin, received a fax signed by the chief prosecutor of the department overseeing the execution of laws and regulations, Yelena Rybalkina demanding urgently the he come to the prosecutor's office in connection with the conduct of an audit on the factual basis of the publication. Lebedkin offered printouts from the website of the British newspaper as his explanation.

The Favorites website comments that experts in Orlov Region believe the action has been taken to "put the paper in its place" at the instigation of the regional administrator, and may be motivated as much by the current wave of anti-British hysteria as a desire to protect the reputation of Mr. Putin.

The statements published by the British newspaper were based on an interview with Russian political scientist Stanislav Belkovsky, who said that Putin during eight years in office secretly acquired control over more than 40 billion dollars. Belkovsky claimed that Putin owns shares in three major Russian oil and gas companies, sheltered by an "opaque network of offshore trusts." The President reportedly controls 37 per cent of the shares of Surgutneftegaz, whose capitalization is $20 billion, as well as 4.5 per cent of the shares of Gazprom. In addition, according to Belkovsky, Putin owns "at least 75 percent" of the Gunvor company - an oil trader registered in Switzerland. These figures Belkovsky have been reported by other newspapers as well, including the German daily Die Welt. No source was cited by Belkovsky.

Commenting on these developments, Belkovsky doubted they were directly ordered by Moscow and said he was inclined to believe that this is a local initiative. But did not rule out the possibility that the Kremlin could be behind it, stating that the authorities today are using any possible pretext to apply pressure to all opposition publications as a matter of policy.

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PUTIN MUST FREE THE NEMTSOV WHITE PAPER!

That craven coward Vladimir Putin is censoring the brilliant, courageous and patriotic research of former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov reviewing Putin's record in office. We demand this outrage cease immediately. Read the paper in English PDF here. The HTML version (can be cut and pasted) is here.

Tell All the Truth

Tell all the truth but tell it slant,Success in circuit lies:Too bright for our infirm delightThe truth's superb surprise.

As lightning to the children easedWith explanation kind,The truth must dazzle graduallyOr every man be blind.

-- Emily Dickinson

Alone

From childhood's hour I have not beenAs others were, I have not seenAs others saw, I could not bringMy passions from the common spring.From the same source I have not takenMy sorrow, I could not awakenMy heart to joy at the same tone,And all I loved, I loved alone.Then in my childhood, in the dawnOf a most stormy life was drawnFrom every depth of good and illThe mystery which binds me still:From the torrent, and the fountain,From the red cliff of the mountain,From the sun that 'round me rolledIn its autumn tint of gold;From the lightning in the sky,As it passed me, flying by,From the thunder, and the storm,And the cloud that took the form(When the rest of Heaven was blue)Of a demon in my view.

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Girl Power: Ginger Rogers could do everything Fred Astaire could do . . . backwards, and in high heels.

Pioneer Power: Though he painted more than 1,000 works of art in his lifetime, Vincent Van Gogh sold only two.

Mark Twain: "It's a man with very little imagination who can only spell a word one way."

Socrates: "To be is to do." Sartre: "To do is to be." Sinatra: "Do be do be do."

Girl Power: On May 14, 2006, a perfect game was pitched in the Oakfield, New York Little League. Perfect as in 18 consecutive strikeouts. The pitcher's name? Katie Brownell. She's the only female player in the league.

Girl Power: On April 13, 2007, the Independent reported that women will soon be able to produce sperm cells from their bone marrow, making men obsolete.